Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

Finns to get go-ahead on convergence

EU finance ministers will give their blessing next week to Finland’s programme for ‘converging’ its economy towards the targets on price and budgetary control required as the entry ticket into economic and monetary union.

European Voice

10/18/95, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 12:44 AM CET

Ministers were due to discuss Austria’s convergence programme at their meeting in Luxembourg on Monday (23 October), but postponed the debate following news of the Austrian government’s collapse.

Ministers will instead hold a short debate on Finland’s programme, which is likely to avoid the criticisms of excessively hopeful economic forecasting that have marred scrutiny of the plans of several other member states. “Nobody seems to think we have been over-optimistic,” a Finnish official said.

The Finnish government expects to shrink its budget deficit to less than 3% of national income by 1999, while economic growth will slow from 5% this year to 2.5% in 1999.

Ministers will also have their first genuinely ‘structured dialogue’ with their counterparts from Eastern and Central Europe. The rambling nature of the last such meeting, under the presidency of the then French Finance Minister Alain Madelin, infuriated ministers. As a result, they ensured this meeting would focus on one issue with a set list of leading speakers.

The chosen topic is reform of the financial sector in Central and Eastern Europe. Hungarian and Latvian ministers will talk on the banking crisis and bad loans, the Bulgarians and Lithuanians on how to set up independent and effective supervisory authorities, the Poles and Romanians on bank privatisation, the Czechs on developing capital markets and the Estonians and the Slovaks on liberalising capital movements.